Alice in the Cities

In his 1967 film, Alice in the Cities, European filmmaker Wim Wenders captures the growing disilluisionment with the American roadside. The main character Felix is a Frankian figure, a European traveling through America taking pictures of roadside scenes. Driving down a highway strip, he muses on the American propensity to tear down the old and replace it with the new. For Wenders, the continual rebirth of the American landscape reveals our lack of historical perspective or any lasting aesthetic value. This disgust for the impermanence of the American roadscape is shared by Henry Miller. He writes how in America, "Everything that was of beauty, significance, or promise has been destroyed or buried in the avalanche of false progress." (cite)

On the experential level of driving, this scene contrasts with the openness and exuberance of 1954 Dodge commercial. Wenders presents the interior experience, both mentally and spatially, that driving has become. The scene is shot mostly through the window of the car, giving the viewer a closed in-feeling. The car travels slowly through a landscape of motels, radio towers, and strip shopping malls. The road has become listless and lonely, a place where you end up talking to yourself rather than interacting with the landscape or the people, or reveling in the thrill of motion. Your only companion is AM radio, and an anonymous motel room awaits you at the end of the road.